Monthly Archives: August 2017

On Saturday, the last day of the Summer School, every team had to present their work. We had people working individually on their ideas, but also groups of people that formed around ideas and that worked on prototypes for their products. And the results were impressive! From a smart pair of glasses that helps you protect your eyesight by offering a fun way to keep a good distance from the desk to a robot that can help you wake up, from a smart box that keeps track of your pet to an app that helps you find the best suited restaurant for you, the projects were amazing!

That is why the Ideas to Products team needed some carefully calibrated filters to be able to select the “best in show” ideas for 4 categories: “Dexter’s Lab” (the project that was the most technically challenging), “For the World” (the most humanitarian project), “Rising Star” (one of the younger team that has a very high chance of being successful people in the future) and, of course, “Best in Show” (the team that succeeded in turning their technically difficult idea into a working prototype that has a very strong business side and has the potential of becoming a successful product).

After the teams pitched and the winners were announced, the teams had an hour to present their prototypes to all the other participants that did not have a chance to see them earlier because they were working on their own. And, at the end of the demo section, all the participants received diplomas for completing their courses. We also awarded the best team in the evening challenges and, for the third year in a row, the Green team won, with Orange receiving an honorable mention for their results in the Super Engineering Competition. We then had a slide show with highlights from the two weeks we spent at IP Workshop and we gave the participants the opportunity to leave some notes for the friends they made here and some feedback for the organizing team.

And, of course Saturday night was the traditional farewell party, where we got the chance to dance the night away. All in all, we had a wonderful time in Târgu Mureș, we learned new things and and we used the new skills we gained to build working prototypes, we brushed our English knowledge so we can pitch our ideas and our projects, we had fun on road trips and at the evening team activities. And, most importantly, we met new people and built friendships that will last way after the end of the Summer.

Yesterday was the final day in which the participants could work on their projects, so the co-working space turned into the perfect setting for a hackaton! We had a self-parking car prototype that used a robot as a car and build an app, a robot that is designed to help the blind just like a guide dog, an automatic pill dispenser, a nurse doctor, a smart home and many more projects that were already pitched this morning (but more about this on a blog post tomorrow).

Last week, a normal day with classes used to end around 5pm, but yesterday, we had teams in the main hall well past midnight, especially since they had to prepare more than a prototype: they also had to make a small presentation of their work, so they could present it in front of everyone in the Summer School.

So here are some photos from yesterday and you can find photos from today’s pitches in the Facebook album and in tomorrow’s blog post 😉

With the pitching day just around the corner, yesterday was a busy day. The robots were moving around, carrying small objects, LEDs were blinking on breadboards, apps were being tested and web designers and developers started combining their work. People were also coached on the business side of their projects so that at the end of the Summer Camp, some of them might actually consider starting a company.

In the evening, it was time for IP SEC, the most mysterious challenge of the camp. It was revealed to be the Ideas & Projects Super Engineering Competition, where the teams had three challenges: to build a straw tower as high as they could, to build a paper plane that could fly further than all the rest and, last but not least, build a device that can get a few eggs safely down a two-floors fall.

The winning team was team Red, but an honorable mention goes to team Orange, who managed to get two eggs down safely.

On Tuesday, we continued working on our ideas. The teams already had their tasks defined and assigned to their members, so everyone started coding. The teachers helped out whenever someone encountered an obstacle and the Idea to Product students started assessing the business side of the projects and the coaching side of their task began.

Later in the evening, all the 10 teams played Activity. At the same time! We made colorful paper boats to keep the score. A member from each team had to come forward and mime, describe or draw something and all the other participants could guess, but only if they ran to the square in the middle, where only one person could be at any given time. We had all the volunteers act as referees for the square so that everyone had an equal chance. This game’s winners were team Lilac, and the ties were settled with a Just Dance show off.

Day 10 – The Road Trip

Yesterday morning, we got on our buses to go to Sighișoara, where we visited local landmarks like the Clock Tower and The Church on the hill and it’s cemetery. Then we went to Daneș, where we visited the Dracula Domain, a horse farm where they also had a lama and some emu birds. Last but not least, we went to Biertan and visited the fortified church in spite of the rain.

We ended the night with boardgames, including a smaller scale Activity, because everyone loved the game.

Yesterday was the first day in which we left our classrooms and moved tables, chairs, power cords and everything else we needed in the Main Hall of the Sapientia University, where we built a co-working space where all the teams can build the first version of their products. But first, we had to decide which projects have the potential of becoming great products and also which teams have the technical knowledge they need in order to have a working prototype by the end of this week.

For this, we asked each participant with a product idea to pitch it for one minute in front of everyone. We had 15 ideas pitched and afterwards, each team had to draw a representative poster on which participants could put stickers if they thought the idea had potential. Meanwhile, our teachers talked to each team to formally evaluate their idea based on a filter the Idea to Product class provided. In the end, only 10 ideas won and full teams formed around them. And then, we started dividing the tasks, making sure we have all the hardware we needed and started working.

But later in the evening, it was party time! Since we already had all the tables in the Main Hall, it was time for our traditional LAN Party, so people from all 10 teams started competing in LoL, Hearthstone, Counter Strike, Rocket League. But since we had a tie, we decided the best way to deal with it was with a little Just Dance show off. In the end, the Green team won again!

For most of us, Saturday was the last day of courses, so we started thinking about the projects and prototypes we will try to build next week. Most of us will be working in teams so we can integrate knowledge from different courses. The teams started forming around ideas, but all those bold plans will need some form of validation, so the first thing we had to think about was how to make a convincing elevator pitch.

Later that evening, it was time for the Music Party. Every team had to dress up and impersonate a singer or a band that was selected for them. From the 90s Romanian girl band A.S.I.A to the classic Beatles, from Lady Gaga to Michael Jackson, the night was full of celebrities performing for the judges. You can find an album of the teams on Facebook.

The Red Team won after they impersonated Lady Gaga

Day 7 – The Disney Princesses

Sunday was the free day, so everyone could catch up on some sleep or some TV shows, get to play socialize outside the courses, maybe even try and create a team around their project idea. And some of us decided we wanted to visit Târgu Mureș, so we made a small group and went to the Zoo, where some of us got to pet some deer like genuine Disney princesses.

Afterwards, we went to the city center, where we enjoyed a more or less traditional meal next to the Roses Square and since it started raining, we went back on campus and played some boardgames, while the volunteers prepared the main hall for the common working space that will reunite all the participants on Monday.

Yesterday was the third day of classes and the participants were eager to go back in class. Since the first week is almost over, everyone started thinking about what they will need to turn their ideas into projects or even products during the second week of Summer School. The line follower robots got better and better, LoRa technology was added to the Advanced IoT class, the Ideas to Products class started probing around to see what people expect from their coaching program and so on.

After dinner, the fun continued with our traditional Just Dance party. Five members from each team had to compete in one-on-one challenges with rival team members in order to score as many points as possible. Of course, behind the game area everyone was dancing just like they were competing or just for fun. We had a lot of laughs watching guys dance on Frozen’s Let it go or by remembering the horse back-riding dance from Gagnam style. And, for the first time in 2017, the Green team did not win last night’s challenge, so the game for the #1 team of 2017 is still on, especially since tonight’s party will feature some interesting costumes, so check our Facebook page tonight to see how inventive IPW participants can be 😉

Yesterday we took a little break from the classes to visit a couple of Romania’s landmarks. The first stop was the Turda Salt Mine, where we went on a guided tour through the salt galleries, where we learned how salt used to be mined until its price decreased so much that the extraction was no longer profitable and the salt mine was turned into a museum.

We also enjoyed the tourist dedicated area, from the mini golf courses and carousel rides in the Rudolph mine to the boat rides in the salt lake that is actually so saturated that the island in the middle is made entirely out of salt. Of course, we took a lot of photos, because the mines look incredible! They even have salt stalactites that form from water dripping in the mine.

Afterwards, we returned to the buses to go visit Cluj, the second most populous city of Romania and the place where the Untold music festival takes place (this year’s edition ended last Sunday). We wandered around the old town looking for something to eat (ending up at the very „traditional” Subway, KFC or Salad Box) and we visited the St. Michael’s Church, where were lucky enough to hear someone practicing the organ. Later, we visited the Cetățuia Park, where we had panoramic view of the city and we took the opportunity to quiz the people from Cluj about all the interesting buildings we could see.

We spent the evening back in Târgu Mureș, where we played board games and looked at the photos we took.

On our third day at IPW Summer School, we began improving the projects we started yesterday by adding more knowledge, but keeping in mind the practical aspect of our classes. During each course, we started refining our new skills either by improving our idea filter or by adding basic programming to the IoT hardware, by learning how to add Angular JS functionalities to a web app or by making a robot track a line, by using the phone memory to store data or by discovering how to properly clip objects in Photoshop.

And after dinner, it was time for the Super Booooowl! Each team had to compete in 3 challenges: cabbage basketball (using a metal bucket), tomato target practice and the traditional race in potato sack. The night was filled with laughs and the field was field with cabbage and tomatoes that our volunteers carefully gathered in order for them to be sent to the Târgu Mureș Zoo.

Tomorrow we have a filed trip and we are going to leave early so the Sapientia dorms are silent while the participants and volunteers are enjoying a well deserved good night sleep.

For most of our participants, today was the first day with courses in their schedule. From Photoshop to Advanced Robotics, from Basic IoT to Android, everyone started brushing up their programming knowledge in order to face new challenges or, on the contrary, started learning the basics of new fields in the IT Industry. And speaking about the Industry, today was the second day for the Ideas to Products course, so we really got into discussing the different ideologies and creeds that entrepreneurs can have.

After lunch, we came back for two more hours of applying what we had learned earlier, so that at the end of the working day, everyone had something that works, built by themselves. Some of us built a basic app that can convert currency, others made a mega-robot that can move milk cartons, some of us created an evaluation system in order to score the potential of an idea, others simulated a switch that turns on and off two LED’s alternatively, and so on and so forth.

Later in the evening, it was party time! We started the series of team competitions with the Game of Trophies challenge. Every team received a series of items they could use to create handmade trophies, like plastic cups, colored paper, glitter. And each one of the teams received a special item, varying from pasta to ping pong balls. They were allowed to exchange only special items between them, so the challenge included a social/bargaining part. The results were amazing, but since there could only be one winner, the judges decided the Green team had been the most creative and they received the first set of trophies (made by the Blue team).

And now, after we moved all the trophies to a safe place and updated the scoreboard, it’s bedtime 🙂